NY Philharmonic Undeterred by Mishaps

Mishaps plagued tonight's concert by the NY Philharmonic, but did not deter the orchestra from giving fine performances.  The program, conducted by Lorin Maazel, was centered around Krzysztof Penderecki's Cello Concerto No. 2 (1982), with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist.  As a prelude to the concerto, we had Bach's 6th Brandenburg Concerto, a chamber piece for six strings and harpsichord.  Following intermission, we had the concert's "ticket-seller," Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  I presume this program was put together in anticipation of spending most of the rehearsal time on the unfamiliar Penderecki, since the Bach did not require rehearsing of the orchestra (presumably the stalwart 6 had their own separate rehearsals for this) and the Beethoven is overfamiliar and frequently played by this group - most recently in February in Korea! 

The first mishap occurred in the Penderecki concerto, when a vigorous pizzicato by soloist Weilerstein led to the snapping of a string on her cello.  She calming got up and carried the wounded instrument off the stage to restring, and everyone just sat their awaiting her return.  They all picked up the concerto at a point slightly before the mishap and played through to the end.  My impression was of a big, formless half hour piece of music without truly memorable themes.  It was very slow getting under way, with an extended, rather wispy introduction before the cellist got to play.  She had some lovely lyrical passages, and some downright ugly chord sequences.  The piece seemed to be patched together from many disparate elements, some beautiful, some raucous and ugly, with little coherence as a musical statement on first hearing.  Perhaps further hearings would yield more musical riches.  Ms. Weilerstein seemed exemplary, but it's hard to judge in this kind of music.

The Bach Brandenburg was a mistake, from the program listing making it look like a concerto for two violas, when it is actually chamber music for six instruments, to the bottom heavy sawing sound of big old modern double bass and cello, and unamplified harpsichord in that big barn of a hall.  I love this concerto when it is enthusiastically played by a half dozen period instrumentalists in what today passes for historically informed performance style, but this modern-instrument run-through did not seem particularly enthusiastic to me.  The opening movement must be sharply pointed, brimming with joy.  This was just fast, cheerless, and metronomic.  The slow movement sang nicely, I must admit, but the finale again seemed to settle into a jogtrot pretty quickly.

After intermission, the Beethoven was an exciting, virtuosic performance.  The second mishap of the evening occurred between the first and second movements, when Maazel, fiddling with a cufflink, suffered a pop-out, and as the cufflink hit the floor, he conceded defeat, rolled up that shift cuff, and conducted the rest of the piece without -- with somewhat comical visual effect in the last movement, when his shirtsleeve was flapping in the breeze like a white flag in the vigorous moments, but there was no surrender by anybody involved.  This was a big, bold, supercharged reading of the popular 5th.  The usual interventionist Maazel was not in evidence, for a pleasant change, and the orchestra was impeccable (save one unfortunate clam in the first horn).  I especially enjoyed Mr. Wang's little oboe cadenza in the first movement, and the extraordinarily clean playing of the fast scalar passages in the lower strings in the trio of the third movement.

So, pluses and minuses at the NYP this weekend, but ending on a big plus.  And, despite my occasional carping about the lack of imagination in Philharmonic programming, this concert seemed nicely balanced out with the familiar and unfamiliar, and the Beethoven is, after all, the kind of music for which the big symphony orchestra was invented....  If not to play this piece, then what?